Listening notes: select a version of Aztec Camera’s Oblivious (1983). Concentrate on the lyrics (do this from the safety of your own home, with the lights on, using speakers rather than headphones).
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LGAS029 -
LGAS028 Listening notes: Search out We Could Send Letters by Aztec Camera. It’s the B side of indie hit Just Like Gold 1981, Postcard Records, Scotland (POSTCARD81-3). Roddy Frame recorded this at the age of 16. I hadn’t heard it before tonight. I was looking for something from Postcard Records because I wanted to avoid anything too obvious (e.g. Treacherous by Britney Spears).
It’s a long and complex song with striking shifts in tone and tune. Stick with it. I liked the lyric “We’re making tracks/ that show our touch and go”. A bit like Michelle the snail.
The chorus is a real leap in melody, with lyrics “Just close your eyes again/ Until these things get better”. And then I heard the guitar solo, and that was perhaps even better.
ALI FINKS
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LGAS027 Listening notes: Listen to Procul Harum’s A Salty Dog (1969), enjoying a glass of the same
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LGAS026 Listening notes: Ladies Night by Atomic Kitten, or the original if you prefer.
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LGAS025 Listening notes: Listen to another Manx celebrity’s song Isle of Man, performed by George Formby for the 1935 film No Limit, filmed during the islands TT Race. It’s the aural equivalent of a dirty seaside postcard. To be endured if not enjoyed. Formby is also immortalised in a statue, near to the marina in Douglas.
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Coming, very soon -
LGAS024 Listening notes: Track down anything by 1970s Liverpool band Yachts while you are reading today’s post. Perhaps Suffice to Say, Yachting Types or Hypnotising Lies. Read about them a little, and their origins. Note the nautical names/ references in their history. Find the connections with Bill Drummond and wonder why you didn’t know this before. Write your reflections in the comments below.
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Little Grapefruit reaches Douglas (not Douglas Kanning, The Benefaktor), eventually.
LGAS023 Listening notes: Enjoy Hans Zimmer’s piece The Docking Scene, from 2014 film Interstellar. Listen out for the Harrison and Harrison 1926 organ, Temple Church, London, played by Roger Sayer.
Share a blood orange with a friend, as they’re in season. The limited period that they’re available in the shops most likely dates this piece to January or February 2025.
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With apologies for the lack of posts this year.
The GANTOB Committee is now down to one member.
Book and pamphlet will be posted to all contributors to the 25 Paintings/ 52 Pamphlets project in February 2026.
That will be the end, for reasons that shall become obvious.
Until then, Little Grapefruit at Sea posts shall resume if I can drag Fiona Finks (AKA The Masters Student) away from her studies, to complete cataloging her mother’s papers.
MAUREEN KATZ, 20 January 2026
GANTOB blog 